Political Parties

As Portugal became democratic after 1974, it also developed a
political party system with a full spectrum of parties that ranged from
the far left to the far right. During the SalazarCaetano regime, only
one party was legal, the National Union (União Nacional--UN), later
renamed the National Popular Action (Acção Nacional Popular--ANP). The
UN/ANP was dissolved in the first weeks of the revolution, and a great
variety of new parties soon replaced it.

Some political parties emerged very quickly because they already
existed in preliminary form. Several factions of the old UN/ANP, for
example, became separate political parties after the revolution. The
socialists and, to a far greater extent, the communists already had
underground groups operating in Portugal, as well as organizations in
exile. Finally, some opposition elements had formed "study
groups" that served as the basis of later political parties.

The party system increased in importance during the Second Republic.
Large, strong parties were fostered under the d'Hondt method of
proportional representation, and parties soon began to receive state
subsidies. The parties' strength was also bolstered by their exclusive
right to nominate political candidates and by the strict party
discipline they enforced on successful candidates once they entered
parliament. By the beginning of the early 1990s, only four parties
regularly won seats in the parliament, and two were so much stronger
than the others that Portugal seemed on the way to an essentially
two-party system.

Far Left

Far-left groups, most importantly the Portuguese Democratic Movement
(Movimento Democrático Português--MDP), had considerable influence in
the early part of the revolution. Consisting mostly of students and
intellectuals, these groups were augmented by leftists from all over the
world who flocked to Portugal to witness and participate in the
revolution. They often engaged in guerrilla tactics, street
demonstrations, and takeovers of private lands and industries. On their
own, these groups could mount major demonstrations; in alliance with the
PCP, they could be even more formidable. Since the heady revolutionary
days of the mid-1970s, however, most of these groups have been absorbed
into the larger parties or dissolved. As of the beginning of 1990s, some
far-left groups were still active at the universities and in
intellectual circles, but they were seen as a fringe phenomenon and
lacked their former disruptive capacity.

Portuguese Communist Party

The main party on the revolutionary left in Portugal was the
Portuguese Communist Party (Partido Comunista Português--PCP). The PCP
had a long history of defiance to the Salazar dictatorship, and many of
the party's leaders had spent long years in jail or in exile. Party
members who remained in Portugal worked underground where they formed
associations and organized the labor union Intersindical. The party was
strongly Stalinist and Moscow-oriented.

Returning from exile in 1974, the PCP's leaders, many of whom were
reputed to be capable and formidable politicians, tried to seize power
by means of a coup, allying themselves with revolutionary elements in
the Armed Forces Movement (Movimento das Forças Armadas--MFA). The
party came close to seizing power in 1975 but failed because moderate
elements within the armed forces and the political parties to the right
of it were committed to Western democracy. Extensive financial aid from
Western countries to these parties also contributed to the PCP's
ultimate defeat.

The PCP, along with its far-left allies, got 17 percent of the vote
in the first democratic election in Portugal in 1975, and for several
elections after that it held its position at approximately 12 to 19
percent of the vote. But during the 1980s, as Portugal moved away from
the radical politics of the mid-1970s and began to prosper economically,
the PCP's popularity declined to less than 10 percent of the vote. The
party remained strong in the trade unions, but younger members of the
party challenged the old leadership and questioned the party's hard-line
Stalinist positions. Some of these young challengers were expelled from
the party. The collapse of the communism in Europe, the aging of the
party's leadership (the party had been headed by Álvaro Cunhal since
1941) and of its membership, and the party's poor showing in elections
indicated that the party would either have to transform itself
fundamentally or fade away as a political force.

Socialist Party

The history of the Socialist Party (Partido Socialista--PS) in
Portugal dates back to the late nineteenth century. Like the PCP, it was
persecuted and forced into exile by Salazar. The party was reestablished
in 1973 in the Federal Republic of Germany (West Germany) under the
leadership of Mário Soares, who had opposed the regime as a young man
and had been imprisoned for his political activities. Soares returned to
Portugal a few days after the coup of April 25, 1974, and the PS began
to function openly as a political party. It had both a moderate and a
militant wing, but the militancy was tempered by the articulate and
politically shrewd Soares.

The PS, as one of the two largest parties in Portugal, has often
formed governments. In the revolutionary situation in 1974- 75, the
socialists were looked on as the most viable moderate opposition to the
PCP. The PS therefore received considerable foreign support, as well as
domestic votes, that it might not otherwise have had. It regularly
received about 28 to 35 percent of the vote and was in power from 1976
to 1978 and in a governing coalition with the PSD from 1983 to 1985.

In power the PS followed a moderate, centrist program. As the
Portuguese electorate became more conservative in the 1980s, however,
the party lost support. In the 1985 election, it got only 20.8 percent
of the vote, although this percentage improved slightly in the 1987
national elections. The party won the 1989 municipal elections, but
despite an impressive improvement in the 1991 national election when it
polled 29.3 percent of the vote, it still lagged far behind the PSD.
Persistent leadership problems since Soares left the party when he was
elected president in 1986 and inept campaigns were seen as causes of the
party's secondary position in Portuguese politics. At times the disputes
between the moderate and Marxist factions were renewed, but the party as
a whole had moved far enough to the right that in the 1991 national
election the PS had difficulty distinguishing itself from the PSD on
most major issues.

Social Democrat Party

The Social Democrat Party (Partido Social Democrata--PSD) emerged as
the somewhat open and tolerated opposition under Caetano in the early
1970s. For a time, the PSD, then known as the Popular Democratic Party
(Partido Popular Democrata--PPD), adopted the reformist political
doctrines popular during the revolutionary period of the mid-1970s. It
was soon overtaken, however, by the PS as the main opposition party, and
it moved toward the democratic center. The radical constitution of 1976
was drafted and promulgated with its help, but even then the PSD was
committed to its revision.

The PSD's fortunes generally improved as revolutionary fervor waned.
In the earliest postrevolutionary elections, the PSD got about 24 to 27
percent of the vote, second to the PS. It had scored well in the
conservative north of Portugal but not in the revolutionary south. As
the party began to occupy the broad center of the political spectrum
under the dynamic leadership of Francisco Sá Carneiro, the PSD's
electoral support grew. In 1978 the PSD formed an electoral coalition,
the Democratic Alliance (Aliança Democrática--AD), with two other
parties and came to power in early 1980 with Sá Carneiro as prime
minister. Since the formation of this government, the PSD remained in
government throughout the 1980s and into the first half of the 1990s,
either as part of a coalition, in a minority single-party cabinet, or as
a majority single-party government.

The AD won the parliamentary election of October 1980, but the
coalition's forward movement slowed somewhat after the death of Sá
Carneiro in a plane crash in December 1980. His successor, Expresso
founder and editor Francisco Pinto Balsemão, lacked Sá Carneiro's
forcefulness and charisma. The party formed an electoral coalition with
the PS in 1983, the Central Bloc, and was in government until 1985 when
the coalition ended. For two years, the PSD formed a minority government
with its new leader, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, as prime minister. In the
1987 national elections, the PSD won the Second Republic's first
absolute parliamentary majority, a feat the party repeated in the 1991
elections. By consistently favoring free-market policies, the PSD
benefited from Portugal's improved economy after the country joined the
EC in 1986 and the electorate's return to a more conservative position
after the radical politics of the mid1970s .

Party of the Social Democratic Center

The Party of the Social Democratic Center (Partido do Centro Democrático
Social--CDS) was a Christian democratic party to the right of the
political spectrum. Though not officially a religious party, the CDS was
linked to mainly conservative Portuguese Catholicism and most of its
officials and followers were Roman Catholic. Unlike some other Christian
democratic parties, the conservative CDS did not advocate liberation
theology. The party was founded in 1975 by Diogo Freitas do Amaral, a
respected politician and a professor of administrative law.

The CDS won 15.9 percent of the vote in the 1976 elections and for a
time formed a government with the PS. It increased its power when it
formed an electoral coalition with the PSD in 1979 and was in power
until the coalition ended in 1983. Since then the party lost much of its
electoral support, gaining only a little more than 4 percent of the vote
in the 1987 and 1991 parliamentary elections, and seemed consigned to
lesser political significance. The strength of the PSD at the polls
meant that the CDS was no longer needed to form center-right
governments. A decline of the PSD seemed the only opportunity for the
CDS to return to power, either with the PSD or with the PS.

Far Right

Since the fall of the Salazar-Caetano regime and as of the beginning
of the 1990s, Portugal had not had a strong far-right party. Most of
those associated with the old regime were driven into exile during the
revolution, and all far-right parties were declared illegal. Some of the
prohibitions against right-wing political activities still remained law,
although in the 1980s many of those associated with the former regime
had returned to the country and a handful had reentered politics. Rather
than establishing new right-wing parties, conservatives and supporters
of the old regime were most likely to be active politically through the
PSD or the CDS.

Popular Monarchist Party

The Popular Monarchist Party (Partido Popular Monárquico-- PPM)
favored the restoration of the Bragança royal family, overthrown in
1910. Their program was complicated, however, by the existence of
several competing Bragança pretenders to the throne. The PPM stood for
a constitutional and limited monarchy similar to the one in Spain. This
would mean that the monarch was a ceremonial chief of state, not a
ruling head of government. The PPM argued that a monarchy would help
unify the government, promote stability, and give the country a single,
if mainly symbolic, head. In addition, the PPM campaigned for ecological
concerns. Only once, in the 1987 elections for the EC, did the PPM win
even 3 percent of the vote. Generally it won less than 1 percent. In the
late 1970s and early 1980s, however, the PPM was part of the AD
governing coalition, which consisted mainly of the CDS and the PSD.

Other Parties

Portugal had a number of other, largely personalistic parties that
rallied around a single leading personality rather than an issue or
program. Most of these were small parties, frequently rising and falling
quickly, and they commanded little electoral strength. These
personalistic parties were often used as bargaining chips in the larger
political arena, where their modest support might be traded for a
cabinet post or other position. An exception to some of these rules was
the Party of Democratic Renovation (Partido Renovador Democrático--PRD),
made up of supporters of President Eanes. In the national elections of
1985, the PRD received 17.9 percent of the vote and seemed poised to
emerge as a major electoral contender. In the national elections of
1987, however, it got just under 5 percent of the vote. After Eanes
himself withdrew from politics, the party faded away, winning only 0.6
percent of the vote in the 1991 elections.